Jens Plahte

Proba AS

Background Antibiotic innovation has dwindled to dangerously low levels in the past 30 years. Since resistance continues to evolve, this innovation deficit can have perilous consequences on patients. A number of new incentives have been suggested to stimulate greater antibacterial drug innovation. To design effective solutions, a greater understand...

Here we describe in detail marketing authorization and reimbursement procedures for medicinal products in Norway, with particular reference to nine novel antibiotics that received marketing authorization between 2005 and 2015. The description illustrates that, in places like Norway, with effective antibiotic stewardship policies and an associated l...

Background The increasing threat of antimicrobial resistance combined with the paucity of new classes of antibiotics represents a serious public health challenge. New treatment technologies could, in theory, have a significant impact on the future use of traditional antibiotics, be it by facilitating rational and responsible use or by product subst...

‘We don’t like patents, remember?’ Castro said. The stage was the largest laboratory in Cuba—the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology—the time was probably around 1990, and Fidel Castro had just entered a room where some senior scientists were discussing the need for patents to protect their growing market. Just a few years before, in 1...

This paper seeks to give some preliminary evidence on the potential outcome of the pneumococcal vaccine Advance Market Commitment (AMC), with a focus on its impact on innovation in 'emerging' vaccine manufacturers in developing countries. The evidence is derived from a series of interviews with executives at industrial vaccine developing organizati...

In this paper the Cuban biotech sector with its highly integrated vaccine industry is analyzed in the perspective of the techno-economic network model of Michel Callon. The paper discusses the strategic evaluations that have been performed in the sector. Given the emphasis on public health displayed by the Cuban government and the precarious condit...

This paper, the second out of two about the Cuban biotech sector and vaccine industry, gives an account of the creation, organization, and management mechanisms of the technoeconomic networks of the Cuban biotech sector and vaccine industry, by applying the concept of techno-economic evaluations developed by Michel Callon. It also seeks to explain...

It is a widespread misconception that tiered pricing of vaccines entails the producers or consumers in the high-price markets subsidising the consumers in the low-price markets. Such a view is inconsistent with realities, as well as with economic theory. In the vaccine sector, the cost and demand structures ensure that all three parties involved be...

Which social and political interests have been influential in the creation of the Cuban biotechnology sector? Is it the needs of the national public health system that are being served, is it scientific knowledge production that is given priority, or are commercialization and generation of export earnings the primary objectives? And how are potenti...